Electronic components in equipment such as computers usually require cooling. To provide such cooling, equipment fans are used, which are located in a housing.
Because electronic components are used in many different kinds of equipment, equipment fans are necessary and must be installed even at poorly accessible points, such as in vehicles of all kinds where space is often very scarce. In such concealed places, removing a fan, for instance for repair or for replacement with a new fan, is often very difficult.
In certain applications, it must be possible to swap out an equipment fan very quickly, so that a fan failure cannot cause any overheating damage to the electronics. This is also known as “changing on the fly.” There is accordingly a need for an equipment fan which can be mounted and dismounted quickly and simply in a control box, fan plug-in module, or the like.
Electronic components are often located in a control box, also called a “rack.” It is usually required that such a control box be shielded, so that only very little electromagnetic radiation can escape from it; that is, the control box must be “EMC-protected,” i.e. protected to assure Electro-Magnetic Compatibility with other nearby electrical devices. Any openings, especially on the front side of such a control box, should, for this reason, not exceed a certain dimension, related to the wavelength of the electromagnetic noise involved. If fans are used that are easily swapped out, this requirement also applies to those fans, and this requirement must be combined with the need for easy installation and easy exchangeability.